Christmas is traditionally a lean time for the UK recruitment industry – with businesses often reluctant to take on more staff while they’re busy conducting end of year reviews or hitting targets.

This means that as a recruiter, you might find things a little quiet over the next few weeks and could be tempted to take your foot off the pedal. While that may seem a good idea, you may actually end up missing out on a number of potential opportunities.

Here a few tips to keep things motoring over the festive period.

Keep your eyes on the prize

Just because the rest of the recruitment world is grinding to a halt, doesn’t mean you should follow suit. By maintaining a steady pace throughout Christmas, you might end up picking up a few opportunities that your competition will miss.

Stay in touch

While we’re not suggesting you send out Christmas cards to everyone on your contact list (unless you really want to of course), keeping in touch with your network is a great way to make sure you’re top of the tree for businesses and jobseekers. Sending little messages over the festive period could even help you out when things kick start again in the New Year, as people will appreciate you letting them know you’re thinking of them.

It’s also important not to let any potential leads go as cold as the weather. If you have any vacancies on your books and there haven’t been any updates for a while, check with the client to see what’s going on and pass any information over to candidates. This could stop them from losing interest and looking elsewhere.

The opportunities are out there

Research suggests that recruiters are struggling to source the right candidates from an ever-shrinking talent pool. The latest Report on Jobs survey by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG revealed that 41% of agencies thought the availability of contract workers was worse than a month ago.

Industries such as finance, IT and engineering were riding high on the demand league table, meaning you could really clean up if you put forward the right candidates.

Look out for a Christmas bonus

Since the festive period is usually slow for everyone, you might find that some businesses will run incentives to persuade you to send candidates their way. This should give you more motivation to beat the downturn, as you could end up walking away with a few treats as well as your usual commission.

Over to you

To get in the Christmas spirit, we’re running a little festive competition. If you refer a contractor to us before 12th December, you could bag yourself some great prizes – including luxury hampers, Kindle Fire tablets and Ticketmaster vouchers.

There’s no limit to the amount of referrals you can make, so sending more of your contractors our way will increase your chances of winning. For more information, or to take part, please click here.